Bulgarian Classics, Zone-Style: 5 Favorites Revisited

The Zone doesn't ask you to give up the food you grew up with, and that goes for Bulgarian home cooking too. Most Bulgarian classics can be made the familiar way with a few changes: leaner meat, extra protein from skyr and cottage cheese, and moderate amounts of rice or vermicelli. The flavor stays homemade, and the blocks are already calculated in the app.

1. Tarator

The classic summer dish, ready in ten minutes. Tarator is a cold soup of yogurt, cucumber, dill, garlic, and walnuts. In this version of tarator, skyr is added to the yogurt for more protein, and olive oil provides the fat. It's low in carbs, so it works best as a starter or alongside a main dish.

2. Meatball soup

The comfort soup of many Bulgarian childhoods. Meatball soup (supa topcheta) is made with lean ground beef, vegetables, and a moderate amount of vermicelli, then finished with egg yolk and cream, a traditional thickening step called zastroyka. Protein, carbs, and fat are in balance, so one serving is a complete meal. It takes about an hour.

3. Cottage cheese banitsa

Banitsa, a Bulgarian phyllo pastry usually filled with cheese and eggs, tends to mean a lot of dough and a lot of fat. In the cottage cheese banitsa, the traditional white brined cheese is replaced with skyr and low-fat cottage cheese, and the phyllo sheets are brushed with olive oil. The filling stays rich and moist, but with more protein and less fat. It's great for breakfast or brunch and bakes in about 45 minutes.

4. Meatballs in white sauce

The home-cooked dish most Bulgarians associate with Sunday lunch. These meatballs in white sauce are made from lean ground beef with onion and carrot, and the white sauce gets skyr and egg yolk for extra protein and body. The dish is protein-heavy, so it pairs well with a salad, for example one of our Zone salads.

5. Chicken drob sarma

A lighter take on a festive classic. Drob sarma is a baked rice dish traditionally made with lamb liver and offal and topped with an egg-and-yogurt custard. In this chicken drob sarma, the liver is replaced with skinless chicken thighs, along with rice, mushrooms, and green onions, and the top is covered with eggs and skyr. It takes about two hours, so it's one for the weekend or a holiday, but it's balanced and keeps you full for a long time.

The secret is in the swaps

If you want to adapt other family recipes, Bulgarian or not, use the same principles:

• lean meat and low-fat ground meat
• skyr and cottage cheese in place of some of the cheese and cream
• less rice, noodles, or dough, and more vegetables
• olive oil instead of large amounts of butter or vegetable oil

With the Zonator in ZoneIt, you can enter your own recipe and see its blocks, so it's easy to check whether your adaptation turned out balanced.